Healing Places

The Cure by Andrea Barrett

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 16, 2022 in Blog, Healing Places, Uncategorized

I have found a cure cottage come to life in a piece of fiction. Everything, thinks Elizabeth, is in order. Ms. Barrett continues: Everything is as it should be, exactly as she would wish it: nine o’clock, on this December day in 1905, and already breakfast has been cooked and served and cleared, Livvie and Rosellen are at the dishes, and all nine of her boarders are resting, wrapped in blankets and robes, on the lower veranda or the private porches of the upstairs rooms. In the light, airy dining room, the new napkins look well in their rings and the cloth is crisp on the table. In the kitchen—the girls look up as she walks by, smiling without interrupting the dance of dishes passing from basin to basin and hand to hand—and also in the mudroom, the woodshed, the smaller shed where the laundry is stored in enormous lidded crates until the boilers are fired up twice each week, everything is as it should be for this hour and minute of the day. There’s a sense of healing place. A sense of order. And a sense that Andrea Barrett has all the time in the world in which to tell us about it. Because of the sensory detail, the rhythm of the prose, I feel my mind slowing down as I read. I feel myself drawn into this world, imagining it. Beginning in the Adirondacks, the story moves back and forth in place, and time, tracing the lives of two women as they come together to run this boardinghouse. Elizabeth, the housekeeper. Nora, the nurse. Nora begins her training in Detroit with a root-and-herb healer Fannie, first living in Fannie’s spare room, going out with her to collect herbs and roots, drying the herbs and roots in her kitchen, making house calls to the sick, then working for a time in a Soldier’s Home with civil war veterans, before making her way to the Adirondacks, her brother’s inn, and beginning to “doctor” the consumptives who have come there to stay. She tries to explain to her brother about this work she’s found: ‘This is what I’m meant to do,” she said—although the swiftness with which it came about had taken her by surprise. ‘It’s what I learned while we were apart, it’s how I make use of myself.’ Elizabeth, the younger of the two women, first makes her way to the Adirondacks with her mother, Clara, arriving that first summer at the inn where Nora lives with her brother. Over time, Elizabeth, still a young woman, attaches herself to Nora, and the two women create together the cure cottage, working together for seven years before Nora dies and Elizabeth continues to carry on the work in her absence. The story opens with the cottage. It also closes with it. There’s a nice sense of symmetry—and of culmination. Elizabeth’s point of view. Elizabeth’s discovery. A wonderful play on the word cure-cottage. What the house itself has come to mean for her. Here is her house. Not a duty, but her living self. It is as if, she thinks, as she moves toward Martin and Andrew and all the others up the walk and the clean brick steps, her hand reaching of its own accord for the polished brass knob in the four-paneled...

Writing and Healing Idea #1: Designing a Healing Retreat

Posted by Diane Morrow on August 13, 2016 in Healing Places, Writing Ideas

Imagine for a moment that you go to your mailbox. You find there an envelope—a small white square. You open the envelope to find an invitation–to a healing retreat. A sheet of paper accompanying the card offers details: For six weeks, it has become possible for all of your ordinary routines and responsibilities to be suspended. Work schedules have been rearranged. Children will be safe and well-cared for. Any appointments (or medical treatments) have been rescheduled such that they will not interfere. In fact, any and all obstacles standing in the way of this retreat have been removed. In addition, your house or apartment will be cared for in your absence. Plants will be watered. Floors swept. The refrigerator cleaned out. Your task, now, is simply to design—in writing—or perhaps with drawings—this retreat. In order to design this retreat you may find yourself needing to suspend disbelief. (Someone is really going to clean out my refrigerator for me?) Go ahead. Suspend. Once you’ve done so you may find the following questions useful in designing your retreat: Where would you like the retreat to take place?What weather do you like?What kind of light?What resources would you like available close by?Walking trails?A piano?A swimming pool?A lake?What kind of accommodations do you prefer?Will the place have a porch?A window?Would you like to be alone in this place?Or do you prefer company?And what kind of company?Do you prefer quiet?Or noise?What sounds do you imagine in this place?What about smells?What does the sky look like in this place?How does the air feel?Where will you sit?Where will you sleep?What will you eat?How will the refrigerator be stocked?Who will prepare your food?What would you like to do on the first day?On a typical day?Is there anything else that’s important to the design of this retreat?What else? Please note that the seed for this invitation to design a healing retreat comes from a short chapter in Deena Metzger’s book, Writing for Your Life. The chapter, entitled, “Setting Up a Retreat,” can be found on p. 81. Photo is of the original Wildacres Retreat Cabin – the Owl’s Nest Cabin – in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina where I had the good fortune to spend a week of writing retreat on two different occasions. You can learn more about Wildacres Retreats here. They’ve added two additional cabins since I stayed...

What I Want by Alicia Ostriker

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 11, 2015 in Blog, Healing Places, Healing Poetry

This is a poem about slowing down and it seems like it might be just right for January, for the quiet space that can open up after the flurry of December. And about what can happen in that quiet. It follows nicely on Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Keeping Quiet,” and seems to spring from that same place. It begins: Yes, that’s what I want right now, Just that sensation Of my mind’s gradual Deceleration, as if I Took my foot off the gas And the Buick rolled to a stop. I can feel that—the quiet after the engine ceases its noise. And I love in this poem what she later suggests can emerge out of the quiet: Let’s try to listen to the announcements Of the inner mind And its committee of guides. They require silence, They demand respect, like teachers In a rowdy classroom—the kids Are in the cloakroom throwing galoshes But the teacher wants to introduce A visitor, a foreign child who waits With downcast eyes, lashes like brown feathers On his flushed silk cheeks. What does my inner mind have on its mind? Ah, the inner mind could emerge—but it might be shy at first—and it might need to wait for the kids to quit throwing their galoshes—for them to look up and realize this visitor might have something interesting—and even important—to say. The full poem can be found at Poetry Foundation. (It spreads over two pages so you need to navigate to the second page to see the full poem.) In a note at the end of the poem, it states that it was written at the beginning of a week-long retreat. The photo of a gray cheeked thrush can be found at Audubon. The bird is described on the site this way: “All the brown-backed thrushes can be shy and hard to see, but the Gray-cheek is perhaps the most elusive. During migration it hides in dense woods, slipping away when a birder approaches. On its far northern nesting grounds it may be more easily seen, especially in late evening, when it sings from...

Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 16, 2014 in Blog, Healing Places, Healing Poetry

I am sharing this poem, “Keeping Quiet,” with my sophomores this week as a writing catalyst. I like the way it has the potential to open up a pool of quiet in the middle of things. It begins: Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. Not instructions for counting to ten—that common advice for dealing with rising anger before reacting. No, this is longer—just a bit longer—stretching the silence out two beats longer. Now we will count to twelve. The opening reminds of something a teacher might say—a pre-school teacher? Or perhaps something a parent might say to a child before some kind of game. I think that’s what makes the line evocative—as if it holds the echo of something we’ve heard before. Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. The poem continues: For once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. No language. No large gestures. What then? Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. A pause for not-harming? A pause for looking at our own hands and seeing why they might hurt? A pause to simply look at what we’re doing and ask why we’re doing it? And to ask whether in fact it makes sense? What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. We would not be doing nothing We would be doing something. It’s a bit like meditation what he’s suggesting. Or perhaps writing. Not doing nothing. Doing something. Doing something different. And then, he tells us, this might become possible: perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves Who would not want this? The poem ends: Now I’ll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go. Do you feel it? A sense of a vast space opening up. The poet has left—and we are here—in the quiet. The full text of the poem is here. It is read by Sylvia Boorstein. The poem is from Extravagaria and is translated by Alistair Reed (The photo is from a video of the poem which has since been taken...

Make Your Mind an Ocean

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 2, 2014 in Blog, Healing Places, Healing Poetry

Continuing with the theme from a couple weeks ago of becoming an ever-larger body of water, I remembered a piece by Lama Yeshe called “Make Your Mind an Ocean.” Here is an excerpt from the piece which I’ve rearranged as a kind of found poem. It has to do with the mind becoming larger and larger and not depending so much on the tiny atoms of the world. The mind becoming larger and larger and in turn not being quite so disturbed by the relentless ripples and agitations of the world. If you’re all caught up in attachment to tiny atoms your limited craving mind will make it impossible for you to enjoy life’s pleasures. External energy Is so incredibly limited that if you allow yourself to be bound by it your mind itself will become just as limited. When your mind is narrow small things easily agitate you. Make your mind an ocean. I remember a time when my children were very young and I was feeling like I didn’t have any space left in my head anymore—as if I couldn’t hold any new thoughts. I got an opportunity to go away to the beach for a long weekend writing retreat and I took it. It was a weekend of just myself in a cottage next to the sound and then crossing to the ocean every day—to walk or just to sit looking out. It was September or October, quiet. I wrote a bit, but maybe not even that much. I remember the way it felt as if, walking, the ocean were literally washing my brain—clearing it, resetting it. Washing my brain, my body, my entire self. And when I returned—same young, vibrant children—same life—same ripples in that life–but I was different—and I had room for them again. I don’t live on the ocean—or have the opportunity to go there that often, but even to have been there once, gives me that image—that memory to work from. I like to imagine, especially when I’m feeling too small for the life I’m living, or too small for some problem I’m facing, the possibility of making my mind as large as the ocean. The sound of the waves and the blue stretching out to the horizon—and the depths of it—that vast and deep and large. “Make Your Mind an Ocean” is from The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind which can be found for free at the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. More about Lama Yeshe can be found in a tribute to him by a Christian monk, Father P. Bernard de Give, written after Lama Yeshe’s death. The photo, taken near Thunder Hole, Maine is by Billy...

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